Day One Hundred and Sixty-Two

The Abandoned Dreams

Most of my Washington memories are of decent, livable homes. A poorer neighborhood might see a significant downgrade in living standards, but after 26 hours of devastated communities, even the grungy ones in Spokane don't seem so bad anymore. Driving in the South will put a weight on your heart. A really heavy one. Held down by the feeling of guilt. Even the roughest areas of Washington and Florida look better than what our eyes witnessed in Mississippi and Alabama. Home after home after home was devastated by the forces of nature and corruption. Overgrown weeds, teetering foundations, torn off roofs, shattered windows, stray toys, rotting walls, flooded properties, trashed yards, infested rooms, and thousands of abandoned dreams. I would guess that one in every five houses was void of human life; where they were forced to move, I can't begin to imagine. Most of those once-homes resemble something like that above. Taken over by the power of nature. Left there to rot. One after another. And those with people inside? They were miserable structures too. Something I don't think any human being should ever be forced to live in. And what about businesses in the area? Even worse. Countless, literally countless, gas stations, grocery stores, restaurants, taverns, churches, parks, stores: empty. All empty. Rotting. As if one day, they just walked away.

The scene was one out of a horror movie. But it was real. This is where people live. People like me. People God loves. People that matter. And when I saw them walking about their shattered properties, my heart ached for them. Everywhere was filthy. It just didn't seem fair. I've faced a lot of pain in my 24 years, but after this weekend, the hardships seemed a little less hard. The pain, a little less painful. I tried to tell my sister this. That even when life seems unbearable, there's a whole world out there facing pain that we could never possibly imagine. That what we have been blessed with is so much more than we realize. And it took today for me to understand just how much I take for granted the freedoms that I have.